Drawing on the wisdom of Christian mystics, early Quakers, and other spiritual explorers,Elaine Pryce contemplates the tradition of silent inward attentiveness to Mystery and Presence as a way to spiritual renewal, healing, and discovery. In compelling, poetic language, she calls readers to the quietness within. Discussion questions are included.

The title suggests Pryce’s topic, finding the Divine in silence. It’s an appropriate subject for those of us who gather, mostly on a Sunday morning, to join our silence in an exercise to align our minds with the Mind of God. Or to use more mundane language, to bring us together to experience a goodness that we would bring with us into the world.

Along the way, Pryce drifts quietly through the notion of “the quiet way offers everyone the means of direct access to God,” to attempts at defining God. She references the Franciscan Francisco de Cisneros, an African creation myth, George Fox, Middle Eastern mystics, and American poet Annie Dillard. Her final say on that matter: “God is more than the very summit of your thoughts, God is more than human projections, wishes, rationalizing, linguistic forms, and ideas. Whatever we believe, our understanding of God will only ever be fragmentary, like the partial and hazy view of a whole landscape we glimpse through a misty mirror.”

With remarkable consistency, the Pendle Hill Pamphlet series publishes thought-provoking, well written essays that deliver interesting and important information in 3,000 words. Pryce’s contribution extends well beyond that description in both well-developed ideas and a literary style exceptional in its exquisite beauty with nary a hint of pretension. ( )

Do we progress towards a greater grounding of faith through our silent, expectant, waiting worship? Or is our time in Meeting barren? The stillness boring, unexciting? Our inward attentiveness to what is calling us might be what is needed for us to be introduced to the Mystery that is the divine. Cultivate those with whom you can have "a new kind of conversation about faith" (23). ( )

Pryce writes of the Quiet Way, the way of inner silence to find our spiritual depths, deep joy, our true life, an authentic ground of eternal truth, a transformational encounter. She quotes extensively not only from the Quakers George Fox and Isaac Penington, but also Thomas a Kempis, Paul Tillich, Meister Eckhart, Annie Dillard, Francis de Sales, Abraham Heschel, medieval and modern, as well as from the Bible. She cites the teachings of a long line of mystics and contemplatives on the Quiet Way to approach the sacred mystery. One of my favorites here is Teresa of Avila, for whom the prayer of quiet was the realization of love; what else do you need to know? she asked. Accomplish what you can and pay attention to the love in which you do it.
She quotes George Fox that the purpose of words (as in vocal ministry) is to lead us to the sublimity of the experience of the spirit. This is a pamphlet of such words, a quietly written graceful pamphlet of pointers to the Quiet Way. ( )